onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-love”

16 Jun 2019

Beautiful. But still not skinny

When I got my eating under control 13+ years ago, I expected to find my husband right away. I thought that the only thing keeping him away was my being fat. Because even when I wasn’t fat while I was still eating compulsively, any hold I had on staying the size I was was tenuous at best. I could always feel it slipping away. 

But when I put boundaries around my eating, and especially when I stopped eating foods I am addicted to, like sugar and carbs, I lost my weight, and it was staying off. And I wasn’t afraid of gaining it back. At all. I didn’t feel like it was a fluke. I wasn’t what they call “white knuckling” it. I was in a regular sized body and fully expected to stay that way. 
But he didn’t show up. For years he didn’t show up. I went on dates. I got pretty hair cuts from a salon. (The kind where you needed an appointment!) I regularly got my nails done, fingers and toes. I wore pretty clothes. For a few years there in the beginning I even wore makeup every day. (I would stop after about 5 years of having my food under control.) But no husband.
I went on dates. I went to bars. I talked to men on the subway and in Starbucks. But he did not show up. 
And then I quit smoking. And I gained weight. I gained a lot of weight. After the first 30 lbs, I stopped weighing myself. I had my food under control, but my weight was out of control. I was terrified. I was miserable. I felt betrayed by my body. But I kept my boundaries around my eating, even in the face of that weight gain and insecurity. 
And I thought “I missed my window. My husband didn’t show up while I was skinny. And now that chance has passed.”
And then my husband showed up. When I was not skinny. When I was, in fact, the heaviest I had ever been with my eating under control.
And I had to come to terms with the fact that being skinny was not what made me beautiful. And it occurred to me that having my eating under control is actually the thing that made/makes me beautiful. The clarity. The kindness. The confidence. The good judgment.
So here I am, a woman with her food under control, who is not skinny. I am fit, and present, and growing, and happy. And still in love with my husband who is still in love with me. He still thinks I’m beautiful. (I still think so too. Because…humble.) But still not skinny. 
And I am so grateful that I got to learn that lesson. That my beauty is not determined by my physical size. That my size is fine, whatever it is, as long as I have my eating under control. Because it was the compulsive eating that made me feel ugly and crazy and unlovable. And in having my food taken care of, I am showing my body that I love it. That I think it is worthy of love. And that opened the way for my husband. Love opened the way to love. Not being “skinny and perfect.”
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02 Jun 2019
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My anniversary of the other side

My birthday is Thursday this coming week. I will be 42. It’s pretty nice. I feel great. I look great. I have no complaints. Not about my life, and not about my age. 
It was on my birthday 12 years ago that I came out of the fog of giving up sugar. 
For most of the first 28 years of my life, I lived in a sugar fog. I was addicted to sugar and carbs from a very young age. And I was high on sugar the majority of my waking life. 
And then at 28, I gave up sugar, and went from being high on sugar all the time to not being high on sugar at all, and that felt like a different kind of high. It meant cravings, and a general slowing down of my brain function,  the adjustment of my digestive system, and a kind of low-level exhaustion basically all the time. My body and brain needed some time to heal. And then one day, my 30th birthday, about a year and a half after I gave up sugar, I noticed that I had woken up. 
In that year and a half of foggy time, I was learning to keep the boundaries around my food. From friends who wanted a bite and I had to say no, to bringing my own food to a wedding and the mother of the bride being mildly offended, to people wanting to make things especially for me and having to politely refuse.
Someone once told me that when you make a commitment, you change the course of your life. 
After that I was learning about how to keep other boundaries. Saying no to people who knew me as eager-to-please. Standing by my “no” when people wanted to coerce or manipulate me into doing what they wanted. Making life choices that made me happy, rather than choices I thought would make others happy. Making choices that I had to then stand by, because they were mine, and right or wrong, I could not pawn them off on anyone else.
If there is a hard part to change, I believe it lies in our relationships with others. I have been a relatively bold nonconformist for most of my life. I don’t particularly care what others think of me. And if I do, it is often a streak of defiance. I dare you not to like me. I dare you to judge me. 
But good lord, even with my devil-may-care attitude about fitting in, when it came to setting new boundaries with people in my life, boundaries I *had to* set to keep my eating under control, it was hard. People want us to be who we have always been. And when we make life-altering changes, like entirely revamping our food life, we will, out of necessity become different people. 
I see it all the time when people decide to do what I do with food. If they want to lose weight but they don’t want to change, they will not last long. They may lose weight. They may even lose all of the weight they want to. But then they inevitably return to old ways and old patterns. 
I have heard when women let their mothers-in-law insist they eat the special dessert made just for them. Or let their husbands convince them that they should have a glass of wine because they used to be fun. Or let their sweet grandmothers feed them that special dish. 
Refusing the homemade lasagna made by my most beloved grandmother (she made it  for Christmas and Easter and it was by far my favorite food in the whole world – in my life, it was what love tasted like) may have been the hardest thing I ever had to do. It was terrible to have to do to both of us. It hurt her. It hurt me. But I had to say no. So I did. 
I do not regret a single moment on this journey. I am grateful for all 42 years of my amazing life. And especially grateful for the past 13 and a half, where I have been learning slowly and steadily how to be my truest self. And even more for that moment 12 years ago, when I looked up from that year and a half of introspection, and pain, and discombobulation and discomfort, and saw that there had been an “other side.” And that I was on it. 
Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
19 May 2019

The possible effect of #BOPO in alternate timelines, and other things that are none of my business

This week I think I want to talk about body positivity and fat acceptance. I say “I think,” because I have a lot of feelings about it. And not all of them are positive. But that’s about my feelings. Rationally, I am all for it.

Rationally I believe very strongly in personal freedom. I don’t believe in shaming people for doing things. I don’t believe it’s anyone else’s business what each of us chooses for ourselves. And that includes our health. 

I think it’s nobody’s business if you smoke, or drink, or use drugs, or have sex, or gamble. And I think it’s nobody’s business what you eat. Or how much of it. And I don’t care if someone is a perfect specimen of health in every way. That still doesn’t give anyone the right to judge or make choices for another. We all make our choices. Our choices have consequences. We each live with our consequences. 
And don’t bother telling me how our choices affect one another. I know that too. I am already on board for the whole “all things are connected” way of thinking. I am asking you to consider how *your* judgements are affecting the world, more than you worry about the ramifications of a fat woman you may or may not know eating a candy bar.
And just to be super-extra clear, I believe that “well-meaning” judgements in the form of unsolicited advice for the sake of “health” are a form of abuse. So unless that loved one (or, as some people need to be reminded, that stranger) comes to you specifically for help, keep it to yourself. In order to really love someone, you have to love them the way that they are right now, exactly as they are. Not as their potential to be someone you approve of.
Having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, the body positivity movement gives me a lot of difficult feelings. I follow a few fat models on Instagram and Twitter. For the most part, I feel about them the way I feel about most models. I like some of their styles and looks, and don’t like others. (I really love clothes.)
But every once in a while, I will see something, the cut of a pair of pants, or a particular fat roll, that will remind me of how much I hated being fat. And how ugly I felt when I was fat. 
In retrospect, and I mean many many years retrospect, I can see that I was beautiful when I was fat. And I really wish I had known.  And I really wish someone had told me. And I really wish I hadn’t cared so much. And I really wish my fat body hadn’t been an issue that I dealt with daily, hourly, by the minute.
When I was fat, my body was on my mind 85% of the time. And 100% of the time I was around other people. It took up a part of my thinking any time I was in public. Literally any and every time. I was wondering what others were seeing. And then what they were thinking about what they saw. How they were judging me. If I deserved it. How I could draw attention away from it. Not from me. From my *body.* And how I could be recognized as separate from my body. Because I was ashamed.
And I didn’t even know that, didn’t understand the amount of brain power I was using to worry about how fat I was, or the depths of my self-hatred, until it stopped. It stopped after I had my eating under control for a few years.
I am not particularly thin, but I don’t really think much about my body now. At least not in terms of other people. I don’t always love what I see in the mirror when I am heavier than I like. And I occasionally don’t like the way my clothes feel if they are tighter than they were. But I don’t walk through the world thinking people are judging me by the size of my body. I can’t remember the last time I worried about what others were seeing when they looked at me. And that is a miracle to the fat girl I was growing up.
I didn’t like growing up in a fat body. But at this point, I don’t know if I was trained into that, or if I didn’t like it because it was not my true self, or rather, not me being true to myself.
I was eating, almost exclusively, things that I am addicted to: Sugar, flour, starch. I was high all the time. My thoughts were muddled. My emotions were a rollercoaster. I couldn’t cope with life in any meaningful way. I could only numb my difficult feelings, and put Band-Aids on my problems. And I felt *compelled* to eat those foods. Even when I didn’t want to eat those foods. Even when I wanted to stop. Even when I wanted to be thin. I had no control over what went into my body. 
Changing my eating changed so much more than my body. But it also made my body-hatred stop. 
I guess some of the difficult feelings I have about body positivity and fat acceptance come from wondering if I could have loved my fat self unconditionally. And if I had, how my life would be different. And if it were different, would it have been as beautiful as it is now.
And some of those difficult feelings come from the fact that the foods I was eating to be the size and shape that I was had contributed so significantly to the way I felt about myself. 
I guess I wonder, to a certain extent, how body positive and fat accepting I could have been of my own self, if I were still eating the foods I am addicted to. Did I hate my body because it was fat, or because I was abusing it with cake?
When I gave up sugar, I also took on a way of life. And one aspect of that way of life is to mind my own business. To practice attraction and not promotion. If you want what I have, do what I do. I am happy to help anyone who wants to try my way of life. 
But it’s not my place to tell anyone they need it. It’s not my place to tell anyone they are an addict. It’s not my place to judge people. Even if I have the same experiences as them, because I used to be fat and found a solution to my eating problem. 
So I am for body positivity. And fat acceptance. And self-love on its deepest level. And I believe that self-love is about loving ourselves exactly as we are, right now. Not some idealized version of ourselves that we could be if we were better. 
But I also have this thing, this amazing way of life that changed everything about my life, and gave me a life beyond my wildest dreams. And I got it because I was unhappy. I got it because I was vain. I got it because I didn’t *want* to be fat anymore. 
I guess the answer is all the way back at the beginning of this post. Let people be who they are. Honor freedom and personal choices. Let people choose for themselves. Love them. Be friends and family and fellows to them without judging them. Wish them happiness. And hope they get it however they get it, whether that’s through giving up sugar, or accepting their fat (haha! No pun intended, but I like it!), or some other thing that I don’t even know about. 
And I should also remember that my experience is just mine. But that if someone wants what I have, and I am a beacon for someone else, then I have used my connection to all things for the better.
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05 May 2019

I don’t want to feel broken even after the broken part got fixed

I have been struggling with how I feel about a recent(ish) weight again. I feel like this happens once a year or so, in the past 4 years. I gain weight. For no discernible reason. I do not change the way I eat, at least not it in any major way. I just gain weight. Eventually I lose it. (At least that has been the case so far.) And then I gain it back months later. And then lose it again. Back and forth, over and over.

When my gram was sick in the hospital before she died, I lost a lot of weight in a few months. I definitely was not trying. I just dropped weight. I got down to about 131-133 pounds. That’s skinny for me. I was still pretty curvy, but definitely skinny. And from about April of 2010 to about August of 2012 I stayed basically the same weight. I stayed skinny regardless of what I ate. I ate a lot of bacon. I ate a lot of fried foods. I had to add a second piece of fruit to my day to keep from losing even more weight. And I just stayed skinny. 
But ever since I quit smoking, my weight has fluctuated wildly. A huge gain in the months following the weight loss. 3 years of maintaining that higher weight. Then I lost it in just a couple of months. Never all the way back down to my skinniest, but back into my size 6 jeans. Then a gain and a loss and a gain and a loss. Again and again.
A friend who has thyroid problems recommended I get mine checked. It’s not a terrible idea. But living on the road makes it a bit of a pain. Though we have great insurance and I could find a doctor anywhere. 
But the problem is also that I don’t like doctors. Having grown up fat, I don’t trust them to listen to me, to respect me, to look at me with anything except what seems to be a disdain for my lack of willpower. I was told for a long time that everything that was wrong with me was that I was fat. And that I could do something about it if I would only pull myself up by my bootstraps, or whatever. 
It’s hard for me to take doctors seriously when they all had opinions about me, but none of them could actually help. They sent me to nutritionists who told me to eat in moderation. They didn’t understand why I couldn’t just stick to a diet. They were frustrated and angry with me. For not being good enough. It’s hard for me not to feel like they were the ones who weren’t good enough. That they were the ones who failed me. That they shamed me for my disease, when they didn’t actually understand the disease. And kept forcing on me a “cure” that wasn’t.
But that’s unfair. Kind of, anyway. Because I don’t know if I would have been able to give up sugar if that had been the recommended treatment. I don’t know if 12 or 16 or 23-year-old Kate would have been available for that. Thank God 28-year-old Kate was. That took care of the eating. And most of the weight.
I don’t want to worry about my weight. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to care about it. I don’t want to be ruled by how much gravity is exerted on my body. I want to take care of it to the best of my ability, and just have that be enough. I want to nourish it and hydrate it and move it with love.
I probably should find out if my thyroid is not working properly. I should probably brave the doctor and find out if there is something wrong with my hormones, something that could be corrected. For that love of my body. Not to squish it into a socially acceptable size and shape. 
But that said, even if I do get my thyroid checked and it turns out that I am not running at 100%, I don’t want to care about my size. I don’t want to judge myself for the size of my butt or my belly or my thighs. I don’t want to feel like I am sick or broken because I am not skinny anymore. Especially when the thing that was most sick and broken about myself, my eating, my addiction to sugar and carbohydrates , is taken care of, with commitment and honor and love, 3 times a day. No matter what.
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21 Apr 2019

Not a special kind of fat

I forgot I had to write a blog today. That, my friends, is what the alarm is for. I have an alarm that goes off on Sunday morning, asking if I posted a blog. Today, the answer was no. Actually, the answer was a lot of profanity, because I was just about to cook for the week. Anyway, time to write.

I have been thinking a lot about the fact that this blog has changed significantly over the years. And as I have gotten healthier, spiritually and emotionally, it has become less compelling.
I am not saying that I don’t have a compelling blog occasionally, but compared to the kinds of things I was writing 7 years ago, when I was working through a lot of leftover stuff from growing up fat, my writing has been…I don’t know. Maybe just less compelling. 
I am not yet ready to hang up my keyboard on this. Not yet, anyway. The act of writing every week makes a difference in my life. It helps me remember that I am a compulsive eating sugar addict every day. Even when it all seems like regular old life. It helps me remember that there are still people out there suffering who should know that if they are unhappy in the life they are in, and the body they are in, and the mind they are in, that there is a solution. One that works.  Not just “for a time” but for months. Years. Over a decade! Who would have thought it? 
When I think about the fact that I spent the entire decade of my 30s with my food under control, that seems like a miracle. Quite frankly, it was a miracle. When I think about the fact that my 40s have me as a person who works out 5 days a week, like a practice, that also is a miracle. 
I was a person who shunned things like caring about my body because I thought they were impossible for me. I thought I was a special kind of fat. The kind that could not be changed. So I hated people who could maintain a healthy weight. I hated people who could and did work out. In my head I ridiculed them. For being shallow. For being obnoxious. For being “normal.” 
But the longer I grow into a person who honors self-care, the more I see that people who care for their bodies are not “normal.” That they are rare. And ever rarer. They are the ones making a difference for themselves and for others.
I am not skinny. I talk about this a lot. Especially lately, while I am getting older and holding more fat on my body. And because I don’t eat low calorie foods in order to maintain a lower weight. It also helps that in my happily married (not so) old age, I don’t have to judge my body through the eyes of some imagined future partner. And that has changed my perception of self-care. I work out because I love my body. I don’t eat sugar because I love my freedom from food addiction. I don’t worry about the weight of my self. I worry about the weight of my protein at each meal. I weigh that out exactly. I weigh all of my food. I follow rules. And by doing that I can let my body be what it is.
So perhaps this is not as compelling as when I was working out my past in front of all of you. But I am currently particularly grateful that I am here, being the proof that even the most “specially fat” of us has hope. And that even the most steadfastly “anti-health”-on-principle of us can have a change of heart and a workout routine.
And yes. I did my workout my 5 days this week. Outside. With the big ol’ hill. And it felt great to keep my commitment.
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24 Mar 2019

The part that’s all blessing

Even after all of the prep I did last week for this week, there is still so much to do. Plus the drive to the home office from my house in the Chicago suburbs is more than twice as long a commute as the last job I was on. So unless I am going to run at 4:30 in the morning (spoiler alert! I’m not!) I am going to have to jog after work. Which, if you have not already heard me complain about, I hate. I am tired after work. Waaaaah! And then while we are home, my husband has been asked to do a 1 day job in Milwaukee, and I may have to go get our taxes done by myself! Did I mention Waaaaaah! yet?
Having my food taken care of is the blessing and the curse of all of this. Just a little curse. The curse part is that I have to do all of the stuff myself. Perhaps someday I will be rich enough to pay someone to do all of this stuff for me. The shopping. The cooking. Washing the Tupperware to pack up my food. Though I weigh almost all of my food (with a very few exceptions, and all sorts of rules around when I don’t have to) and I do have a commitment to weigh all of my food for myself. No matter how rich I get, it will still be my own responsibility to know my portions exactly. Also, my husband and I are doing pretty well financially, but not get-Kate-a-personal-chef-well. Though Powerball is up to $750 Million….
But the blessing is that when I do this stuff, I don’t have to eat compulsively. I talk a lot about all of the great stuff I get from having my eating under control that is only peripherally related to eating. Like being a good worker, or having self-respect. Or having great relationships. But one thing that I get every day, whether I screwed up at work, or I have a good bout of “imposter syndrome,” or I have had a fight with my husband, is that I am not eating compulsively. I am not a slave to food. I love my meals and they end, and I move on with my life.
The truth is, I owe at least 4 people calls and emails. (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! I have not forgotten you!) And I had to write this blog. And I had to cook and prep for the rest of the day, and tie up some loose ends for work tomorrow. But one thing I didn’t have to do was eat something I didn’t want to eat, but couldn’t stop myself from eating. And that part is all blessing. 
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17 Mar 2019

Logistical Tetris, and then the fun part

As a person who travels for work, I get to see all sorts of places and be part of all sorts of communities. And I enjoy that very much. There are things I like and things I dislike everywhere. For example, I won’t miss the way people drive here in Tennessee, but being so close to Nashville was fun. 
But it’s just about time to move along, and that means my least favorite part of this way of life. Apartment hunting. Setting up utilities. Packing, hauling, and unpacking. Tying up loose ends. Ending and beginning again. 
It’s stressful. It’s a lot of moving parts. It’s kind of like logistical Tetris. All of the pieces are coming at you in quick succession and you have to get all of them to fit together in a certain time period. 
It’s times like these that having food boundaries is helpful, especially in terms of self-care. Because I already have an attitude that prizes planning, preparing, and protection of my food. For example, I am looking ahead to the future and realizing that I will have to prep more food than usual in advance. Both today for next week at our permanent residence. And then again in two weeks when it’s time to officially pull up stakes here and head to a new home in a new town.
I know a lot of people who forget to take care of themselves in difficult or unusual situations, times of change and upheaval. They forget to eat until they are starving and/or hangry. They forget to sleep enough because they need to get “one more thing” done. They don’t make time to take care of their bodies or their minds. 
And what’s more, they think they are doing the right thing, being honorable, sacrificing.
I am not saying that there is not a time to sacrifice. There is. There is beauty and honor and love in it. But I am going to suggest that moving apartments is not that time. If I had to sleep in a hotel for a night, I could do that. Having the internet turned on immediately is not life or death. (I even have a hotspot on my phone!) And since we change residences about every year or so, that would make for a lot of sacrifice, of my my health, my happiness, and my relationship (I don’t want to be cranky, angry, and taking things out on my husband) to basically be able to like stuff on Facebook. 
Getting my eating under control taught me about my own priorities. It taught me *how* to prioritize. And my well-being is my number one priority, followed closely by my husband’s well-being. Everything else is a situation that will pass. 
So I will have to do a bit more work today. But it will give me peace of mind and keep my head clear. I won’t be nervous about when or where my next meal will be. I will be able to think about all of the many things I have to get done, without worrying about how I am going to take care of my needs. I will be free to go with the flow of life.
But one of the best things about logistical Tetris is that all of the pieces come in rapid succession, but then they are in place, and it’s done. And then I can look forward to getting to know a new place and a new community. And that’s definitely the fun part of a life of traveling.
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03 Mar 2019

Belly rolls are not the real problem

I was getting dressed the other day, and I looked down and I did not like what I saw. Belly rolls.  It made me a little sad. Mostly what made me sad was how little I liked my body in that moment.

I follow all sorts of people on Instagram and Twitter. Skinny people, fit people, fat people. I like seeing all kinds of bodies on social media. 
My point is that I am not even remotely as judgmental about other people’s bodies as I am about my own. I like seeing all shapes and sizes. I think they are beautiful. I like diversity. But I am not nearly so generous with myself. And I want to change that.
I am very happy with the ways I care for my body. And I am very happy with the way I feel in my body. I love the things that I can do. I love the ways that I can move. 
Hating how my body looks is a very old feeling. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hate it. If not right there on the surface, then buried very deep down. 
I come from a family of women who hated their bodies. Women who fought their bodies. They fought food. Fought size and shape. Fought dresses and pants. Fought age and time.
I think most women are taught to hate their bodies. Even women who naturally (or with a lot of effort) are successful in meeting societal criteria for feminine beauty, they have to worry about keeping it.
I have managed to gently and lovingly transform my body from painful and unhealthy to vibrant and well. And still, I have this deep-down disappointment in a vessel that has been ridiculously adaptable, capable, and generous with me, even after years of abuse and neglect. Over something as natural as belly rolls when I am sitting down.
I don’t want to hate my belly rolls. I don’t want to feel like I need surgery to “fix” myself. Mostly because I’m cheap and I can think of a million things I would rather spend my money on. But also because there is no guarantee that something like that would even help. You would think that losing well over 100 lbs would stop me hating my body. But it didn’t. Why would cutting it up and sucking it out do any more. 
My problem is inside me. My problem is not belly rolls. It’s not size or shape. My problem is the world told me I was only as worthy as my outer beauty, beauty as the world defined it, and I believed that. And internalized it. And said it over and over until it was indistinguishable from what I thought. 
I want to think other things. I want to know that my body is exactly right exactly as it is. I want to take care of it. Not so it can become beautiful, but because it already is. I want to honor it because it deserves to be honored. I want to reward my body for what it is, not punish it for what it is not.
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24 Feb 2019

I, personally, can’t be starved out of my shackles.

Low carb diets are, of course, all over the news and advertising that is meant to look like news. I see all sorts of things on social media, especially since my blog is an eating disorder blog, about food, and weight, and weight loss. 

There is a particular doctor on Twitter that makes my blood pressure spike. I don’t follow him, because I think he is a bully, and I don’t need that kind of energy in my life if I can avoid it, but I see him come up a lot. My experience of him is that he bad-mouths low-carb diets as a fad, and then plays the victim when people defend their own low-carb lifestyles.
He makes me *feel* like everyone in the medical and nutrition field did when I was fat and couldn’t stop eating. He makes me feel like if I were “good enough” I could eat one slice of whole grain bread and the whites of two boiled eggs, and feel satisfied in at least my own self-righteousness, if not in my actual belly. I prefer feeling satisfied in my belly.
His most recent Twitter complaint was that he had a diabetic patient get off their meds by eating 1000 calories a day, instead of low-carb, and he claimed that people (no doubt low carb activists) said that was “wrong.” His point was that different things work for different people. 
Perhaps that is true. But I think this particular example is troubling.
I, for one, am glad that 1000 calories a day did not work for me. (Yes, I tried that many, many years ago, and was more obsessed with food than I ever had been fat. And certainly crazier. Definitely more miserable.) And I have to ask as well, how sustainable is 1000 calories a day? Can this person do that for the rest of their lives? Hell, even another six months? And can it really be considered a success if they cannot keep it up?
I’m not saying this person can’t. Perhaps they can. But my guess is that in order to do that, they will have to change more about their life than just what they eat. They would have to transform their thinking about food and comfort and joy. They would have to learn how to eat solely for the purpose of fueling their body. They would have to eat to live. I have respect for that. No desire for it, but much respect. And I believe very deeply that there are not many of those people in the world.
I do not eat to live. If I did, I’m sure it would be easier on me. I live to eat. I love to eat. I relish and savor. And I don’t want to eat half a grapefruit and some water with lemon for breakfast. I want an egg and some bacon, and a giant apple and coffee with whole milk. This doctor would, doubtless, find much to criticize in my food choices. Processed meats and lots of fats. Veggies sometimes deep fried and often sautéed. Lots of butter! Full-fat dairy. And artificial flavors and sweeteners! “Healthy?” No! Do I care? Not even a little!
I also want to be clear, as I said in my post last week. I don’t do what I do for my health, though I am healthier than I have ever been before. I do it for vanity. And sanity. And clarity. Mainly, I do it because I was a slave to food, specifically sugar and carbohydrates, and now I am not. And there is no way a boneless, skinless chicken breast and 3 slices of tomato was ever going to loosen those shackles. But homemade full-fat frozen yogurt? A girl can practically fly!
Posted in Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
17 Feb 2019

My new kind of vanity

It is my experience that when we talk about the “whys” of making life changes, we have a go-to reason. Health. 

We want our loved ones to quit smoking for their health. We want them to eat right for their health. We want them to exercise for their health.
Maybe health is a good reason for some people, but I promise you, those people aren’t addicts. There is a saying that I love. “You can’t scare an addict.” 
I was well on my way to being a diabetic when I was eating compulsively. That is not the reason I stopped eating compulsively. I smoked a pack a day for about 17 years. I knew that it was bad for me. That is not why I quit.
Every good decision I ever made for my life and my health was made in the name of vanity. And the longer I have my eating under control, the more my concept of vanity changes. 
For example, for many many years, I would not leave the house without makeup. I had very strong feelings about what I looked like and how I wanted to project myself. But one day about 8 years ago, I left the house without it and got more attention than I usually did. That changed my views on my own vanity. Now, I almost never wear makeup. That is its own kind of vanity. I am vain about my natural beauty. 
When I quit smoking, it was because I was looking to be in a relationship, and the guys that I was interested in weren’t interested in dating a smoker. I wanted to look like I had my shit together, so I got my shit together and quit smoking.
I am currently obsessed with my hair. When I stopped using traditional shampoo and started using cleansing conditioner, I discovered that my hair, which I had always thought was straight, is naturally wavy. I have started a new hair care regime that is, quite frankly, kind of a pain in the ass. But I love my naturally wavy hair. So I make the time.
When I was eating compulsively, I had lots of structures in place to project a specific me to the world. A lot of artifices to fit in. (Which is saying something, since I have always been at least a little on the fringe. Though some of those choices, I would realize once the food was taken care of, were artifices too…) 
When I got my eating under control, I started to break down many of the structures I had put up, and I stepped into the real me. Who was both not as weird, and much much weirder, than the me I had been projecting.
In putting strict boundaries around my eating, and abstaining from simple sugar and carbs, I find that I am continually becoming more and more myself. And that is beautiful. But not always what I thought it would be. 
For one thing, I am not skinny. Even with all of the rules and restrictions I have around food, and my regular exercise. And that one has sometimes been hard to let go of. But this body that I am in is really me. Not starving on a diet, not binging into oblivion. Just eating real, nutritious food, three times a day in specific portions.
And, like with the vanity of quitting makeup, there is a kind of vanity in loving my not-so-skinny body. Really, that is my new vanity. I am vain about the real me. The me in a real body with my real hair and my real face. And I grew into that vanity by getting my eating under control. By not covering myself up with fat, or paint, or artifices. Though I do still love a hot dress. I expect that will never change, but who knows. I’m open.
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